More photos from Whidbey Island. In the first is a young guy whose name I can't remember except his second name was Peddersen. He was still at high school I think. This was his first F1 race. Looks like he's getting good advice from Brian Richmond. Second is Jim Kelley. The aeroplane appears to be a Stinger. He had a bit of a problem with C of G and ended up with three one cent coins taped to the tail. Jim's building skills were great and the third photo shows a Miss Dara that he had just completed.

Images

Here are a couple of Quickie 500 photos. Quickie started off as an easy entry into racing and became too specialised and too fast. No surprise there. It's happened to every other entry level class. Also racers naturally like improving things and they like racing with their friends so they don't always move up a class. Q500 is still there so it has to be the worlds most enduring class which suggests something was right from the get-go.

Absolutely nothing to do with model airplanes but everything to do with pylon racing. Most pylon racers seem to make a pilgrimage to Reno at some stage. We went while we were in California. If I lived in Sacramento like some of the guys on this forum I'd be heading over the mountains every September.
First photo shows myself in front of RA 'Bob' Hoovers Evergreen P51. The second shows the Super Corsair taxying out before the Gold final. There are thousands of others but this forum isn't the place to show your holiday snaps.

OH, during the 70s the ST 40 was making head way with Terry Prather pushing it. I was in the B.I.R.D. club then and we ran many of the races. F1 was hot with as many as 100 contestants intering them. the times back then was around 2;00, real slow compared to todays times. I miss those days.